Survival bosses are fought in the shared Boss Dungeon. Players no longer build shrines or summon bosses in normal worlds.

1. Speak to Malakar the Gatekeeper at spawn.
2. Enter the protected dungeon.
3. Speak to Malakar inside the arena.
4. Pick a boss and review the materials.
5. Confirm the summon. Essence and materials are consumed only when your queued fight actually begins.

Only one boss can be active at a time. If the arena is busy, confirmed summons enter a queue and keep their Essence and materials until their turn. Visitors can still enter as spectators.

When a queued summon reaches the front, a 10-second boss countdown begins. Teammates already inside the dungeon join the fight automatically. Online teammates and allied-team members elsewhere receive an invitation and can use its chat button or /bossjoin accept during that countdown. The short delay gives everyone time to equip gear and accept before the boss appears.

Anyone else in the dungeon becomes a spectator. A participant who dies or leaves cannot rejoin that fight and watches the survivors instead.

/bossrituals opens the same boss catalog. Outside the dungeon it is a cost preview; summoning still requires the Gatekeeper and arena.

Every boss costs Essence plus exactly two themed items: one ritual focus and one catalyst. Only the summoner pays; teammates, allies, and spectators join free.

Tier	Boss	Essence	Materials
1	The Veilbound Marshal	25	1 Bell, 1 Golden Sword
2	Cindervale Arbalest	40	1 Soul Campfire, 1 Bow
3	The Gloam Matriarch	60	1 Cobweb, 1 Fermented Spider Eye
4	The Briarveil Regent	80	1 Mangrove Roots, 1 Spore Blossom
5	Thalassa the Drowned Veil	105	1 Conduit, 1 Heart of the Sea
6	The Argent Confessor	130	1 Anvil, 1 Iron Block
7	Asterion the Rift Oracle	160	1 End Rod, 1 Eye of Ender
8	Morvessa the Runebloom Witch	195	1 Brewing Stand, 1 Dragon's Breath
9	Noctyr the Veil Warden	235	1 Sculk Shrieker, 1 Echo Shard
10	Corrupted Oathkeeper	300	1 Respawn Anchor, 1 Nether Star

Only ordinary versions of these materials count. Custom items disguised as a vanilla material cannot be consumed as summon payment.

Losing a started fight consumes the entry payment. If the boss fails to spawn, an administrator interrupts the encounter, or the server shuts down mid-fight, the plugin returns both portions. Offline Essence refunds are saved and delivered on the player's next join.

Boss mechanics become lethal from tier 2 onward. A failed mechanic removes 72% of maximum health at tier 2, then 78%, 84%, 88%, 92%, 96%, and 98% from tier 8 onward. Repeated floor and beam hazards use smaller percentage hits, but staying in them will still kill quickly.

From tier 5 onward, successfully clearing a positional mechanic gives a small reward. Movement checks grant Speed I for four seconds, while escape and sigil checks restore up to two hearts. Oath Rings also require a clean spread before the reward applies.

Every mechanic starts with a title, a short chat explanation, the exact failure damage, an action-bar reminder, and one warning sound. Mechanics that change instructions mid-cast announce the new step once. Repeated action-bar updates do not repeat chat or sounds.

The Veilbound Marshal's blue marker is an isolation check: the marked player stays inside and is immune to their own circle, while every other player must leave it. Ashen Crossfire follows the same ownership rule for each red marker. Widow's Claim trail pools become dangerous after they land, giving the hunted player time to keep moving.

Late bosses also have short casts that seal all healing. Natural regeneration, potions, powers, enchants, relics, and healing from teammates cannot restore health until the cast ends. The seal appears in the title, chat explanation, and action bar.

Extra players increase boss health, attack damage, ability pressure, target counts, and mechanic frequency. The scaling follows the current number of surviving fighters so a larger group cannot erase a boss with raw damage alone.

Class identity still works in normal combat, but boss encounters resist effects that skip their mechanics. Bosses resist health-deleting backstabs, hard crowd control, summon swarms, and Infinity projectile blocking. Time Stop, Domain Expansion, Voidstep, Wayfarer portals, Oath Summon, and Skybound flight cannot move players around an active encounter. Failed mechanics also bypass Phoenix Rebirth and Graveborn's second chance. Druid blessings are unchanged, though healing blessings still obey healing-seal casts.

Every summon opens with a short protected reveal. The boss cannot attack or take damage until the final sound and expanding ring release it. Each boss has its own entrance spiral, attack trail, impact sound, and phase-shift burst; the effects are paced so repeated hits do not stack audio or flood nearby clients.

Every boss also has a different original note-block battle theme. It begins with the encounter, loops without a gap through every phase, and stops when the boss dies, the fight resets, or the listener leaves. Fighters and dungeon spectators hear the same theme through the Jukebox/Note Blocks volume setting.

Use /settings to mute only the boss music. Mechanic warnings and combat sounds stay enabled so the fight remains readable.

Successful participants also build permanent progress with Mogrik's Boss Mastery. Each boss has five cumulative ranks with Essence, common materials, utility relics, permanent Huntmarks, and unique gear without giving away rare progression materials.

The shared reward chest now grows with the group that actually fought. Each additional meaningful combat contributor adds 25% to guaranteed boss progression materials, up to 2x materials with five contributors. Chance-based gear, tables, orbs, Soul Imprints, and other rare rolls keep their normal chance and quantity, so extra spectators or idle players cannot multiply jackpot loot.

• Building, breaking, explosions, natural mob spawning, fire spread, weather, PvP, and random block ticks are disabled.
• The arena is a void world with a safety return if a player falls out.
• The supplied arena world is installed automatically the first time the plugin starts.
• Guaranteed progression materials scale with meaningful combat participation; rare-drop rolls do not.
• A defeated boss creates a protected participant-only chest. It disappears when empty or after two minutes, then everyone returns to spawn.
• Player-dropped items are owner-tagged. Anything still in the arena at cleanup is returned to its owner; unclaimed boss loot returns to the summoner.

Use /dungeonkeeper spawn while standing at the desired spawn location. Aliases: /dungeonnpc and /bosskeeper.

Set arena points while standing at each desired position:

• /bossdungeon setentry - idle arrival and lobby point.
• /bossdungeon setfight - participant arrival point.
• /bossdungeon setspectator - spectator and eliminated-player point.
• /bossdungeon setboss - boss spawn point.
• /bossdungeon setkeeper - expected position of the internal summoning NPC.
• /bossdungeon - show current points, phase, and queue length.
• /bossdungeon loadouts - open the one-click pre-boss test kit GUI. /bossloadout <boss> equips a kit directly.

Use /bossqueue leave to cancel a queued summon before it starts. After changing the keeper point, remove the old internal NPC with /dungeonkeeper remove and place it at the new point with /dungeonkeeper spawn.

The plugin creates a second Gatekeeper inside the dungeon automatically. /bosses spawn remains available to operators for testing, but survival players cannot use the old world shrine system.

On Paper 26.2, the arena is stored inside the primary world's dimensions/minecraft/boss_dungeon folder after its first load. Copy the complete primary world and SMPCore data when moving the season to another server. This preserves the arena and both Gatekeeper locations.